


The Recipe

by Foxtrot_run



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-11-04 03:45:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17890877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Foxtrot_run/pseuds/Foxtrot_run
Summary: After she discovers the fate of her parents, Hermione falls back on her thirst for knowledge to deal with her grief. George Weasley, immersed in his own despair, is intrigued by her process.





	The Recipe

Harry knew that she wouldn't stick around for long. She'd been growing increasingly anxious in the days after the final battle, fingers constantly picking at a hem or climbing the handle of her wand or pulling at a curl, only waiting until Fred’s funeral was over before packing a rucksack in record time and disappearing.  
It wouldn't have been fair to say that she was only thinking of her parents then because it wasn't true. He'd seen how she couldn't look at Molly without tears pooling in the corner of her eyes, how her jaw quivered whenever George appeared in a doorway like a shadow, only to slip back away before hardly anyone noticed. It was more that she needed every last bit of herself in one place before she could even think about beginning to heal and they were the last piece.

When months had passed without word, he found himself waking more cheerfully than ever. Things were slowly returning to normal around the Burrow and Hermione’s parting note had led him to believe that she'd be spending time to regroup when she found her parents in Australia before returning.  
And then, as they sat around the table that night, the room buzzing with warm conversation that glowed like a new flame, he had been proved so utterly wrong that he couldn't quite catch his breath.  
She was so pale that her dark hair looked black against her cheeks and the cuffs of her jeans trailed red dirt as she closed the kitchen door behind her. Harry was on his feet before he knew what was happening, Molly close behind him.  
“Harry,” she whispered as he reached her, tucking her into his arms. “It wasn't… They're… Harry…”  
And then her knees gave out and even George, who had only left his bedroom because his mother had nagged and begged for the last three months, started to his feet, mouth open and forehead creased.  
He sank with her to the floor and felt her tears run down his neck to soak into the collar of his shirt, warm and then cold against his skin. Her mouth opened in a silent scream and she shook so hard that Molly started sobbing, had to turn away, and Ginny came to stroke her hair, unruly as always, and her back, a hand clamped firmly over her own mouth. Harry looked at her over Hermione’s shoulder and saw the horror he felt reflected in her eyes.  
It was late by the time she finally stopped, rendered almost catatonic with grief, and Harry and Ginny lay with her in Ginny’s bed until she was asleep. 

When dawn broke and Hermione was gone, Harry and Ginny quickly grew frantic. Before the pink had faded from the horizon, the entire household was combing the home and surrounding fields for a trace of her, fearing the worst - whatever that was - but hoping for anything else.  
George had seen her before anyone else. He'd made a beeline for the path that meandered half a mile south to meet the road into town and she'd come into view moments after he stepped off the property.  
Harry had watched in amazement with the rest of them as George escorted her home, her arms and his filled with paper grocery bags brimming with flour and eggs and all manner of bizarre things.  
Harry took a seat at the table as she unpacked the bags. Molly watched on anxiously, kneading her hands against the counter as Hermione pulled out baking powder and coconut and a whole chicken.  
“If you're hungry, dear, I'd be happy to…” Molly started but Hermione fixed her with a look of determination and shook her head slowly.  
“Thank you, Mrs Weasley, but this is something I need to do.”  
George watched, too, but only for a moment, only long enough to frown and run his eyes over her too-thin frame and the mountain of groceries before he retreated. Harry was relieved; since Fred had died, George’s humour, if it could still be named as such, had taken on a dark, cruel edge that was sharper than a knife. 

She started baking. Her movements were awkward and stilted at first, having never been anything resembling a decent cook. She often paused to rummage through Molly’s cookbooks, but she increased in speed and fluidity as the day wore on. She didn't seem to notice that Harry was still there and he didn't think she would have heard him if he asked what she was doing, so he didn't.  
Ginny sat with him for a while, and then left, and then came back. They ate her fourth batch of gluey cookies for morning tea and a soupy shepherd's pie for lunch. Hermione only stopped long enough to taste what she'd made, jot a note in the exercise book she'd laid open amid the tangle of equipment and ingredients on the counter, and prepare for the next recipe.  
“It could use some pie, Hermione,” George muttered as he stirred his lunch around his plate.  
“For Merlin’s sake, George,” Ron hissed angrily, pausing in drinking his pie from the lip of his plate.  
Harry glanced nervously at Hermione but she was oblivious, already measuring flour out for cookie batch number nine. 

It took three days for Harry to ascertain, from broken sentences and stray words that seemed to flow a little more freely every day, what was going on. Hermione seemed to have had a realisation sometime between passing out the night she'd come home and going on her impromptu grocery mission that, from then on, her memories of her parents would only grow weaker. And then she'd come to the realisation that she'd never taste their cooking again. And then she realised that she could in fact taste their cooking again if she got started right away so as to have her strongest memories on hand.  
Harry saw the logic, mostly, but he was a bit concerned about having to eat mediocre shepherd's pie for the foreseeable future while Hermione perfected her recipe. He was also a bit concerned about how long it would take for George to do something horribly insensitive if she continued to leave line-ups of cookies and muffins and cupcakes around the house like a baking museum. Her book was starting to become thick with notes and Molly was starting to seriously fear for her kitchen. 

After a week, the Weasleys had seemed to fall into a routine of Hermione-watching. Mostly it was a silent activity, sometimes broken by quiet murmuring conversation between Harry and whoever decided to keep him company, unless it was George who visited rarely at first, and then more and more often.  
George watched Hermione shrewdly, read the notes in her book, adding things into the margins when she wasn't looking, and tasting her samples with unrestrained curiosity and unchecked commentary.  
She never seemed to react so Harry started to relax, enjoying the spectacle of George Weasley becoming preoccupied with Hermione Granger’s preoccupation.

Hermione noticed on her third batch of blueberry and coconut muffins. The first two had been less than solid but this had overpassed the mark, being so solid that he couldn't take a bite, and George’s scrawled notes no doubt stated this in no uncertain terms.  
She'd drifted from a bowl to the oven to the notebook and run the end of her pen across her bottom lip as she read and then... paused. Her eyes flickered up in surprise, catching George's gaze and Harry suddenly wondered what he'd written to garner such a reaction. They'd stared at each other for a long moment and then Hermione’s pen had moved across her lip again and time resumed.

Then she made a roast chicken which was decidedly pink on the inside. She prodded it for a long time with a skewer, Harry looking on in mild interest, before George came downstairs, took one look at the undercooked bird and said: “I understand the concept but I'm sure it's supposed to be a dime and a pudding, not salmonella and a chicken.”  
Hermione looked up, her mouth open for a moment in surprise and then turning up into the ghost of a smile. George seemed startled too. He took half a step back before thinking better of it and instead snagged a droopy-looking muffin from the table, took a bite, then grimaced. 

It was a week later that the counter was covered in gingerbread, stacked like dominoes and numbered with little flags on toothpicks. Hermione and Harry regarded them with matching frowns.  
“It's not right,” Hermione said.  
Harry shrugged. “Number twelve was quite nice.” Hermione shook her head. “Number twenty-one was closer.”  
“Are you sure?” Harry remembered number twenty-one as being salty and spicier than the masala she'd attempted for dinner a few days prior.  
Hermione vanished number twelve and glared at Harry. “It has to be the same, not nice,” she snapped.  
“You're right,” Harry said, resigned.  
“If I can get it right…” Hermione said and her voice shook a little. Harry looked at her but she didn't meet his eyes.  
George chose that moment to stumble down the stairs, straight past them, and out of the kitchen door into the garden, hands shoved deep in his pockets. Hermione turned to the window and watched him traipse down the hill towards the pond.  
“Where's George going?”  
It took Harry a moment to realise that Hermione had asked him her first question in close to a month and his eyebrows felt like they must be about to fly right off.  
“Where’s…”  
Hermione twisted her mouth impatiently. “George, Harry.”  
Harry coughed a bit and looked out the window. “Er, he goes out there when he's feeling… angry, I think. He doesn't exactly talk about it.”  
Hermione folded her arms tightly over her chest. “Why’s he angry?”  
Harry shrugged. “I don't know, he just… is.”  
Hermione turned sharply from the window then and glowered at the biscuits stacked around the kitchen.  
“This isn't working,” she said and sent the whole army of biscuits into the scrap pail by the sink with too much force. They broke against the bottom with a sound like bullets exploding into a battlefield. “This isn't working.”  
“What's not…?” But she was already stomping up the stairs.

Harry was alone at the table when George returned, looking mildly more approachable than he had before. He looked at Harry and then slowly surveyed the kitchen.  
“Where’s Hermione?”  
Harry clenched his jaw. He may not have known exactly what was going on in George’s head but he did know that, whatever it was, it was volatile.  
“She's gone upstairs.”  
George moved into the kitchen, picking through the debris on the counter before ending up at the scrap pail. He lifted it and peered inside with a frown. “What's this?”  
Harry's fingers drummed a nervous rhythm against the tabletop and George noticed, eyes narrowing. “She decided that she was - er - finished.”  
“She can't!” George protested, slamming the bucket back onto the counter and starting towards the stairs.  
“George; wait!” he called, hot on his heels.  
Hermione was sitting by the window in Ginny’s room, knees tucked under her chin and fingers digging deep grooves into the skin of her ankles.  
“You can't just give up,” George said as stormed into the bedroom.  
Hermione jerked around, already fizzing with rage. “You did. I don't see why I can't,” she spat.  
George trembled. “I didn't! It's not the same!”  
“No, it's not the same. You have no idea what I've lost.”  
“You know what he and I were to each other,” George protested, voice dangerously low.  
Hermione took a step closer. Harry could hardly stand to watch. “And you know nothing about me,” she hissed. “You can't possibly understand me just as I will never understand you. So back off.”  
For a moment, Harry thought that George would do just that; he paused and seemed to lean back towards the door. And then a breath filled him. “I want to...”  
His face had melted into an expression midway between intense sorrow and longing and even Hermione seemed to soften.  
She sighed. “Please leave me alone, George.”  
George dithered for a moment, reaching out tentatively to touch Hermione's shoulder with his fingertips. She frowned at him and moved back to her place by the window as he watched. Then he turned and left, brushing past Harry without a word.  
Harry stood in the hall for a minute longer before approaching Hermione as quietly as he could. “Hermione?”  
She pressed her fingers to her temples. “I feel… I need to be alone.”  
“Okay,” he said, although it came out like a sigh.  
She didn't look at him as he left.

Ron had brought home his Auror texts for the Christmas holidays and Harry pored over them in the bedroom they shared curiously. He’d always thought that he’d go on to be an Auror when the war blew over but, when the opportunity was presented to him only weeks after the battle, he’d paused. Ron hadn’t; he’d leapt.  
The texts had been bought new and the corners were still crisp and square and Harry rubbed his thumb over them absentmindedly as he browsed the contents. He’d hoped that it would be more interesting, really. He’d hoped that he’d want to report for training on the spot.  
The door burst open with a noise like a car crashing into a wall and Harry jumped and spun around, the book falling onto the floor with a resounding smack.  
George stood in the doorway for a moment, regarding Harry with a look that he’d become quite familiar with over the last half a year or so: that sort of wary, reluctant look that had him searching for an excuse to turn way. And then it vanished and his eyebrows quirked and a half-smile slid across his face like a cloud. He held up a biscuit and nodded to it.  
Harry’s own eyebrows shot way into his hairline. “Have you… ?”  
George smiled in earnest. “Yep, my first invention in… well, that doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’re going to be my test subject.”  
Harry already knew that he’d have to agree but couldn’t help asking if George thought it was safe as he took the biscuit and eyed it skeptically.  
“Oh yes, quite safe. You won’t turn green and grow warts either, so get that look off of your face,” he said, rolling his eyes a little.  
Harry sighed but took a bite. And then, when nothing happened, finished it off.  
It was a bit bland, he thought, and was just about to tell George so when the sudden taste of shortbread filled his mouth, warm and buttery with a dusting of icing sugar, and the room suddenly felt warm and cosy and loud. The ghosts of people were materialising around him, moving in and out of focus and laughing and dancing around what was becoming the Gryffindor common room. He recognised Hermione and Neville and... there was Lavender Brown who he knew had died during the battle. He watched her sidle up to Ron and laugh at something he said.  
This had happened before, he realised. Lavender and Ron were going to sneak off to a dark corner to snog and Hermione would frighten Dobby by praising his baking enthusiastically when he popped in to take the empty plate. This was a memory he’d almost forgotten he had.  
The Gryffindor common room fell from around him with just as much warning as it had appeared and he was again in Ron’s bedroom, the semi-sweet taste of the biscuit still on his tongue, the shortbread all but gone with the memory.  
George was staring at him anxiously. “Did it work?” he said.  
Harry blinked at him and then it dawned on him. This was for Hermione.  
“Yes, it was perfect.”  
George nodded once and bolted from the room. Harry could hear his heavy footsteps clattering down the stairs at speed and wondered how he didn't trip on the treacherously uneven floorboards.

Ron’s snoring woke him up on Christmas Day. Harry's heart pounded, thinking maybe the ceiling was falling in, Death Eaters descending upon them from all sides, but then he saw his friend’s snuffling shape by the soft light just blooming into life outside the window and relaxed back into his pillow.  
The house was silent, the cold and the dark keeping everyone in bed. If tea hadn't seemed like such a good idea, Harry was sure he would be tucked up as well. His feet had hardly hit the landing when he saw that the kitchen was already occupied, aglow with gentle light from the fire, and he pressed himself out of sight around the corner. George and Hermione, who had tears dripping silently down her cheeks, were sat at the table, each wrapped in a Weasley jumper. Harry watched as Hermione choked and buried her face in her hands.  
George hesitated for a moment, long enough for Harry to notice the little unwrapped box on the table before them almost filled to the top with a neat stack of his biscuits, before carefully folding himself around her. She tucked her face into his neck, gripped the wool of the back of his jumper in her fingers, and sobbed.

“We’re moving out.”  
The table fell silent at once, the happy chatter fading into confusion.  
“You're moving… Together?” Molly set her fork down carefully, bewildered.  
Hermione cleared her throat before speaking again, casting a determined glance at George who fiddled nervously with the potato on his fork. “Yes, together. To the flat above the shop.”  
Molly’s mouth fell open in surprise so Arthur took over. “Well, that's wonderful!”  
Harry couldn't help but grin, especially when he noticed how George’s hand reached for Hermione’s under the table from his spot on her other side. “Really great!, he said and Hermione smiled at him gratefully.  
The months since Christmas had been much kinder to her and George than those since the war and he was just relieved, really, to see that the chill of mourning had receded from their cheeks and something other than grief and sorrow lined their faces.  
And the way they'd grown closer had Harry’s mouth quirking into a smile every time he saw them together. They didn't seem to know it yet, they laughed it off whenever anyone suggested it, but their touches and looks and the way their conversations seemed to spread over weeks, taken up again after a pause without preamble, made Harry certain that something else was going on.  
Molly finally regained her wits and dragged some details out of them, happiness flooded back to the table, and then dinner resumed. Harry watched George shoot Hermione a look of relief and his gaze lingered on her until she looked back and smiled, squeezing his hand. Harry smiled to himself and began working on his potatoes.

Ginny had surprised them all when she’d come home that June with not only straight Es on her NEWTs but Neville Longbottom on her arm. When Ron brought his Auror diploma to family dinner that Sunday a party had almost immediately been declared.  
Harry was decidedly tipsy when he'd finally escaped a heated drinking game with Dean, Angelina, and Charlie Weasley. Molly was effervescent with joy, people surrounding her on all sides as the fairy lights twinkled in the dark of the summer night, and Ginny and Neville had snuck off to snog somewhere. The thought of them sneaking around even as adults made him grin so widely that Ron snorted as he passed.  
“You're not half drunk, are you? Bloody lightweight.”  
Harry rounded the corner, laughing, and found himself just outside the window to the kitchen, the pane slid open to let the cool of the evening take the heat from the house. George and Hermione were stood by the stove, her head resting on his shoulder and his hands around her waist.  
“I want to marry you,” George said, and Harry almost whooped in delight, having to stifle himself with a clumsy hand.  
Hermione leaned back to look at George’s face and smiled. “I'd like that,” she said.  
Harry’s eyes widened and he bolted back into the midst of the party to find Ron.  
“Ron! There's something amazing that's just gone on!”  
Ron laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “Did you find Fleur’s cousin? She is something else.”  
“No,” Harry exclaimed, still beaming. “Even better.”  
And then Hermione emerged from the house and it took Molly all of two seconds to catch a glimpse of the ring on her finger.  
“Oh my,” she gasped. Then louder, “Oh my darling girl!”  
Harry was laughing and Ron was gaping. George came up behind them and Hermione smiled at him and he smiled back.  
They looked so happy.

**Author's Note:**

> I love a bit of Geormione and have had this sitting in my Google docs for ages! A bit unpolished but I hope someone else finds some value in it!


End file.
